Jewish Quarter

The Jewish Quarter is one of the four quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem. In 135 AD, after the Roman emperor Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as "Aelia Capitolina", Legio X Fretensis set up its camp in the Jewish Quarter and built new structures, including a bathhouse, over the Jewish ruins. During the Ottoman era, the Jewish Quarter was heterogenous, with most of the homes in the quarter being leased from Muslim landowners. Due to overcrowding in the Jewish Quarter, many Jews even moved into the Muslim Quarter. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Jordanian Arab Legion commander Abdullah el-Tell had the quarter shelled with mortars and destroyed on 28 May 1948, killing both fighters and civilians. During nineteen years of Jordanian occupation, a third of the Quarter's buildings were demolished, and 22 of its 27 synagogues were razed. During the June 1967 Six-Day War, Israel recaptured the entirety of East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the desolate Jewish Quarter was rebuilt after 1969. By 2004, the Jewish Quarter had 2,348 residents.